Infarm unveils new automated growing centre with higher-yield capabilities

Berlin-based vertical farming company Infarm has introduced new high-yield growing centres that integrate its advanced cloud platform, marking its latest efforts to build a sustainable and resilient farming ecosystem.

The company’s new modular growing centre consists of a local farm and distribution centre in one, which is said to yield the crop equivalent of up to 10,000 square metres of farmland. Infarm claims its new method provides up to 400 times higher efficient food production than soil-based agriculture.

The automated centres use a new data-driven approach – which combines big data, IoT and cloud analytics – that enables environmental settings such as CO2, temperature and pH to be monitored; providing one-touch access to data across thousands of farms distributed around the world. 

“The entire Infarm network is connected to a central farming brain that gathers more than 50,000 growth, colour and spectral data points through a plant’s lifetime,” said Guy Galonska, co-founder and chief technology officer at Infarm. 

“We’ve collected more than 300 billion data points throughout our farming network to date. These data enable us to perfect our growing recipes and improve yield, quality and nutritional value, while reducing the production price constantly,” he added. 

A new Infarm growing centre is made up of dozens of modular farming units, each standing between 10 and 18 metres high and occupying 25 square-metres. Each farming unit can reportedly save up to 10 million litres of water per year, compared to soil-based agriculture for similar crops; while contributing up to 40% energy savings over previous Infarm technologies.

According to Infarm, deploying its new high-capacity growing centres will drive additional global growth and scalability to match the needs of retailers of any size in any location.

By 2025, the company hopes to establish 100 growing centres, expand to new markets and grow its network to 500,000 square metres. 15 centres are currently planned or under construction this year in major urban centres such as London, Paris and Toronto.

The company currently has farms in 10 countries and 30 cities in hundreds of stores and says it provides fresh produce to 50% of the world’s largest food retailers such as Kroger and Marks & Spencer.

“Today we’re adding speed to scale with new technology that allows us to deploy a growing centre to any city in the world in a fraction of the time, space and capital investment of most large-scale farming solutions today. Both the farms and the software that powers them were designed to make fresh food more accessible for everyone, everywhere,” said Erez Galonska, co-founder and CEO of Infarm.